Ahmad works at Michalis’s hotel. Kousay found work at the island’s bakery. Maha and Maysoon are working for the first time in their lives and feel the joy of earning a salary and being able to support their families. Mohsan for the first time devotes time to raising his children. All of them live in Tilos. The island that has been demonstrating its solidarity since the beginning of the refugee crisis; not with words and analysis, but with deeds.

SolidarityNow follows these people in their everyday lives, takes notes of their stories of coexistence; stories which they share with us and portray emotions, realities and dreams as they narrate them. In #LivingTogether, a photographic journey with the collaboration of the photojournalist Giorgos Moutafis, we travel to Tilos, the island of tangible solidarity. And we realize that “small miracles” just need brilliant and open minds and few competent people with a great deal of will.

*SolidarityNow’s innovative Accommodation & Hosting program in Tilos, implemented since 2016, is proving in practice how integration of refugees in local communities can be a lever for sustainable development in a local community. The organization’s vision of this program being a model of hospitality and social integration and ideal coexistence, became an international example of positive change: a tangible example, with concrete results and achievements that can be replicated in other European societies on how a “crisis” may be transformed into “a success story”.

#ESTIA, the Emergency Support to Integration and Accommodation programme, is implemented by SolidarityNow, supported by UNHCR and funded by ECHO.